Politics

  BEIJING / AP China praised US President Donald Trump on Thursday for expressing a desire for a “constructive relationship” in a letter to Chinese President Xi Jinping, even though the leaders have not spoken directly since Trump’s inauguration. Trump sent belated well-wishes for the Lunar New Year in a letter from the White House on Wednesday. He had been ...

  WASHINGTON / AP Two US government-funded news outlets are launching a global Russian-language TV network aimed at providing an alternative to slick, Kremlin-controlled media that critics say spread propaganda and misinformation. Current Time, run by Prague-based Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty with help from Washington-based Voice of America, is targeting Russian speakers across the globe with round-the-clock programming intended to ...

  SAN FRANCISCO / AP A federal appeals court will decide whether to reinstate President Donald Trump’s travel ban after a contentious hearing in which the judges hammered away at the administration’s motivations for the ban, but also directed pointed questions to an attorney for two states trying to overturn it. It was unclear which way the three judges of ...

  KABUL / AP Gunmen killed six employees of the International Committee of the Red Cross in northern Afghanistan on Wednesday, the aid group said, adding that two other staffers were missing. The eight-person team was delivering livestock materials near the northern town of Shibirghan, capital of the Jowzjan province, when the gunmen attacked their convoy, it said. “We condemn ...

  MOSCOW / AP A Russian court on Wednesday found opposition leader Alexei Navalny guilty in the retrial of a 2013 fraud case, which formally disqualifies him as a candidate for president next year. However, the first time Navalny was convicted, his sentence was suspended and he was allowed to be a candidate for mayor of Moscow. An associate said ...

  WARSAW / AP Poland’s ruling party leader says his talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel were held in “good atmosphere” and that he believes her visit will bring “good results.” Poland’s most powerful politician, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, met with Merkel late Tuesday during her half-a-day visit to Warsaw. TVN24 on Wednesday showed him kiss Merkel’s hand in greeting, a vanishing, ...

  ANKARA / AP CIA Director Mike Pompeo will visit Turkey on Thursday in his first overseas visit to discuss security issues, including Turkey’s fight against a movement led by a US-based cleric accused of orchestrating a failed military coup, Turkish officials said, in a sign of improving relations between the allies. Pompeo’s visit was decided during a 45-minute telephone ...

  BEIJING / AP China is drafting policies to attract Taiwanese to live and work on the mainland, a government spokesman said on Wednesday, in a direct appeal to the island’s population amid a deepening political standoff between the governments in Taipei and Beijing. The Cabinet’s Taiwan Affairs Office said on Wednesday that residents of the self-governing island democracy will ...

  MOSCOW / AP A prominent rebel leader in eastern Ukraine has been killed in an explosion in his office, his associates said on Wednesday. The rebels’ Donetsk News Agency said Mikhail Tolstykh, better known under his nom de guerre Givi, died early Wednesday morning in what it described as a terrorist attack. The agency said 35-year old Tolstykh was ...

  JERUSALEM / AP A Palestinian Cabinet minister on Tuesday called on the international community to punish Israel for a contentious new law, just hours after the Israeli parliament adopted the bill to retroactively legalize thousands of West Bank settlement homes built unlawfully on private Palestinian land. The explosive law, approved by lawmakers late on Monday, is the latest in ...